Since November is National Non-Fiction Month, I want to highlight a section of the library that doesn’t usually get the most attention: the “Video Nonfiction” collection and, specifically, the vast and fascinating world of documentaries. What do you think of when you hear that word? The soothing voice of David Attenborough and his nature docs? A corny television docudrama? A very dry PBS doc? Be honest…a part of you thought “boring,” didn’t it? Well, let me show you that documentaries are so much more!

Nowadays, you can find documentaries about every subject matter imaginable on streaming platforms, the most popular genres being true crime, history, nature and wildlife, and science. Netflix, especially, has redefined how mainstream documentaries are shot, edited and consumed, and has imposed a specific style, format and tone. You are probably familiar with this distinctive Netflix style that almost always includes voiceover narration, interviews with experts, slow motion, and B-roll (supplemental footage intercut with the primary subject matter), which have become the norm in today’s documentaries.

But documentaries have a rich history that starts with the invention of cinema itself and is rooted in journalism and photography. Two different forms of filmmaking concurrently evolved at the end of the 19th century, when cinema was born: fiction, for which many early technical and narrative developments were led by French filmmakers Alice Guy and Georges Méliès (go read this Blog Post if you want to learn more about early cinema); and nonfiction, with the practice developed by the Lumière brothers and their many “views” (50-second single-shot documentary films). The first film ever shown in public, in 1895, Workers leaving the Lumière factory, was a documentary directed by them.

By the way…what even is a documentary? A common definition is that it is a film that documents reality, and presents factual information about real people, places, issues, and events. John Grierson, the filmmaker who coined the term in 1926, defines it as “the creative treatment of actuality.” Because – contrary to popular belief – documentaries are not reality; they are mediated reality. They may seem to represent reality objectively, but they don’t: a multitude of creative decisions are made about editing, cinematography, subjects, and more.

At first, this practice of filmmaking was used to document science experiments, but quickly steered towards travel, ethnographic, and anthropological films. One of them, Nanook of the North (1922) directed by Robert Flaherty, follows the life of an Inuk man, Nanook, and his family. Heavily staged and romanticized (for example, Nanook is not the protagonist’s real name), the film exemplifies that the distinction between fiction and nonfiction can be blurry.